Where does the toilet flush on an airplane? Toilets on airplanes: design features, diagram and operating rules. Number of lavatories in new aircraft

The question about the features of the water supply and sewerage system on an airplane is quite common. After all, even experienced travelers they don’t always know the exact answer, and the myth about human waste being released outside, as when traveling on trains, only strengthens its position. Let's try to figure out all the riddles.

To figure out how an airplane toilet works and where the waste goes, you need to figure out how the water got onto the plane in the first place.

The entire volume of water is filled inside the aircraft tank just before takeoff using a special tanker. The quality of water is confirmed by a certificate of conformity and a control certificate.

In older aircraft models, water storage tanks are located under the ceiling in different places - in the tail, in the middle of the cabin and above the forward corridor. Refilling is carried out at several points, and the liquid flows by gravity. Modernized modern airliners contain storage tanks, inside which air compressors create a certain pressure, and water is distributed among the main units:

In the kitchen boiler, to provide passengers with drinking water;
In the shells;
On some planes - for flushing the toilet. For certain types, water is collected inside a separate tank for such use (for example, Tu-154).

How the onboard toilet works

The toilet room is nothing strange, and many people have seen how a toilet works on an airplane. This is a fairly ordinary toilet, under which there is a receiving tank, on top there is a flush button, a roll of toilet paper, and next to it is a trash can. But the operating principles of sewage systems are different.

Dry toilet

In many modern aircraft There is a system of dry toilets. All impurities are washed off with water or a solution with chemical additives into special tanks, where they are stored until the end of the flight. Instead of water, they can use a vacuum system or a powerful air stream that draws waste into a common tank. The residue is then removed with a limited amount of water.

Closed sewer type

The principle of recycling applies here. Initially, water is taken from the main tank, and after flushing it passes through a filter system and is sent for reuse. At the same time, filters trap solid waste in certain containers.

Sufficiently strong chemicals are added to the tank to disinfect and remove unpleasant odors.

After landing, all passenger waste, regardless of the principle of sewage system operation, is removed from storage tanks. Through special hatches, using a vacuum, all sewage is pumped into a tanker truck and transported for disposal to designated areas located on the airport territory. And the onboard sewage system must be cleaned and flushed. Before the next flight, it is refilled with clean water.

Where to find a toilet on an airplane

The location of toilet cabins on different aircraft differs in the same way as the sewerage and water supply systems.

The Boeing 747 stands out from all others by having 11 toilets on board. There are 2 compartments at the beginning and at the tail of the salon, 4 rooms are in the middle, and three are on the second deck;
The Boeing 767 contains 5 lavatories: two in the middle of economy class, one at the beginning of business class and two between cabins;
Most Russian aircraft have three toilet compartments: 2 are in the tail, and one is at the beginning of the cabin;
But Russian-made military aircraft often do not have a toilet cabin at all. Special sealed containers are provided for crew members. For passengers with emergency situations Inside the cargo compartments, ordinary galvanized or plastic buckets with lids and plastic bottles are placed.

Basic rules for using the toilet during a flight

For your overall safety, you need to know how to use the airplane toilet, as well as adhere to certain public transport rules.

The use of the restroom is prohibited during takeoff and landing;
From the outside, the toilet door is opened using a handle located under the inscription lavatory;
Be sure to stand up and close the toilet lid when pressing the flush button, especially if the vacuum system is in use. If you sit, then theoretically there is a possibility that you will be attracted by a powerful flow of air;
To dispose of waste, use only trash cans located inside the restroom. You should not throw toilet paper, napkins, especially diapers, sanitary pads and tampons into the toilet. Otherwise, you can damage the entire sewage system, because these things absorb liquid and increase in size several times;
Try not to create lines to go to the restroom, especially before meals. It is better to go there 15 minutes before or after food delivery;
Smoking and the use of smoke-emitting products in the aircraft toilet are strictly prohibited, otherwise the alarm will sound.

And is it true that sometimes something unpleasant can fly from heaven to earth?

An airplane, of course, is not a train, but... it can still fly from it, and such cases are known.
For example, in July 1998, a fisherman fishing near Straubing-Wallmühle airport, northeast of Munich, was doused with feces from an Airbus 320, and the victim reported this to the police. In January 2000, a Spanish man narrowly escaped injury when a 4-kilogram ice ball made of human excrement fell from a flying plane onto his car near Seville. The man was about to get into the car when suddenly an ice gift measuring 20 cm fell from the cloudless sky and dented the hood of the car. In November 2016, a piece of frozen excrement fell through a window into the house of a resident of the Dutch town of Amstelveen. And these are just three of a series of similar cases...
How could this happen? Where did they all come from, since airplanes don’t open airlocks to get rid of waste?

The first toilets on airplanes were simple buckets. There is no information about when the first flushing systems appeared, but while there was no pressure in the aircraft cabin, opening doors and windows was not difficult... Now, of course, everything is not so.

Let's start with the main thing - where is the toilet on the plane?
Different planes have different locations and numbers of cabins:
The Tu-154, A-320 and Boeing 737 each have three toilets: one is located at the entrance to the plane, and two are at the tail.
Boeing 767 - 5 toilets: 1 at the beginning of business class, two between business and economy classes, two in the middle of economy class.
Boeing 747 has 11 toilets: two at the beginning and end of the aircraft cabin, four in the middle of the cabin, and 3 toilets on the second deck.

How it works?

After a passenger presses the flush button in the toilet, a noise similar to a large vacuum cleaner appears. The cause of the noise is the opening of the valve in the toilet. It occurs due to a large difference in pressure in the toilet and in the space below it. Thanks to this vacuum, all contents along with the smell are sucked down.

At one time there was a persistent myth that a fat person who would sit on the toilet while flushing could be sucked into this vacuum. So - it can’t!

When the plane is in the sky

Everything goes through special pipes into tanks at the tail of the plane. There are several such tanks on airplanes. For example, the Boeing 777, which can carry about 400 people, has three containers for storing the contents of the toilets. Each tank is connected only to its own group of toilets. Thanks to this, even if one compartment overflows, toilets connected to other tanks will work.

The volume of these tanks varies from aircraft to aircraft. So, in the Tu-154 there are tanks for the front toilet with a volume of 115 liters and for the second - 280 liters, and in the A-320 there is only one tank with a capacity of 170 liters. Chemicals are added to the tank to disinfect the water and remove odors. In order to save tank space, the flushing system is designed to use a minimum of water.

In the A-320, toilet water is taken from the aircraft's water supply system. In the Tu-154 and Boeing-737, the sewage system is closed and operates according to the recirculation type - the toilet flushing fluid is taken from a separate tank, which is refilled before the flight. When the waste is flushed, large particles are retained by the filter, and the filtered liquid is sent for a second cycle to flush the toilet. Chemicals are added to the tank to disinfect the water and remove odors.

By the way, did you know that when designing aircraft, the weight of filled tanks is also taken into account? They also significantly affect fuel consumption.

When the plane is on the ground

Upon arrival at the airport, toilet tanks, regardless of the filling volume, are emptied through a special drainage pipe. At airfields there are vacuum trucks that pump out all the contents and take them for disposal.

As for feces falling from the sky, this actually happens periodically in different countries peace. There is usually one reason - technical problem aircraft sewer system.

Here's what aviation engineer Roman says about this romadm Madebeikin in his LJ: “The fact is that local leaks in the dampers sometimes cause liquid leakage outside the aircraft. The liquid freezes and expands, turning into a block of ice, which falls off (or not) from the high-speed air pressure. This ice is called Blue Ice (because the chemical that is added to the liquid makes it blue). I myself personally witnessed when a plane arrived with an icy “beard” sticking out from under the service hatch of the water (not toilet) system. There was a small water leak.
In the Tu-154, this ice accumulated in the front toilet can break off and get into the engine. There were such cases. This already seriously affects flight safety. Therefore, SPECIAL attention is paid to the tightness of this damper.”

Photo (from) blog.klm.com,

Today we will look at what governments are hiding from us. As we all know, a typical airplane toilet looks something like this:

Here we see the usual things: a toilet, rolls of paper, a flush button (upper right corner) and the very moment of flushing - a cheerful blue slurry carries our money away into the distance. Now let's see how it all works. We will not go into details of the devices of different toilets on different aircraft, so I will only describe this toilet.

It is designed quite simply - right under the seat there is a receiving tank with a capacity of approximately 62 liters. This tank is filled with special liquid in the amount of 12-15 liters. This liquid is obtained by dissolving the powder in water - either in advance; or you can fill the tank with water and throw two small bags in there. The liquid has the property of dissolving feces. Typically, after each landing, the contents of the tank are drained into the airport toilet maintenance machine and fresh liquid is added.

Meet this tank:

A stainless steel glass, a tank, hoses and some other devices are clearly visible. Fiberglass tank. The toilet hole is closed with a metal valve, which simply hangs there on an axis. If anything hits it, it will open and everything will fall lower into the tank.
Along the perimeter of the toilet, under the rim, there is a flush manifold - this is a tube with holes that directs the liquid from the pump to wash the inside of the glasses in a spiral. The toilets are serviced from panels on the starboard side of the fuselage:

First, the operator of the sewage disposal machine opens the external valve of the drain neck using handle 1.

Then he connects a hose with a diameter of approximately 12 cm to the neck (there is a ball lock on the hose).

By pressing handle 2, the stopper is removed from the inner petal of the neck and the petal opens outward into the hose.

The operator pulls the handle (red rectangle), this opens the drain from the tank, and the contents run merrily through the pipes.

Then the machine’s suction is turned on, a vacuum is created in the hose, and all the good stuff is sucked into the machine’s receiving tank.

After this, a smaller hose is connected to the flushing and filling fitting.

The tank is washed with fresh special fluid.

The drain hose is disconnected, handle 1 is used to close the inner petal and the outer cover of the drain neck at the same time. The handle for draining the tank is recessed.

Finally, blue fresh liquid is pumped into the tank.

Everything is ready for the next flight.

Now some details. This is the drain valve assembly on top:

The valve opens by pulling the cable.

The valve itself is a rubber bulb that plugs a hole in the bottom of the tank.

Interestingly, for the front toilet, an additional ball valve is installed in the drain pipe, driven by the same cable. The rear toilets don't have this. But for rear toilets, an additional tank is sometimes installed, into which the contents of the main tank can be overflowed when it overflows.

And this is the upper part of the flush pump electric motor.

The motor drives the centrifugal pump, which is located inside the filter.

The filter is a mesh metal cylinder that separates large undissolved particles from entering the pump and further into the flush manifold. The filter gradually becomes clogged (mostly toilet paper), and it starts from the bottom.
It is easy to determine if the filter is clogged by the volume of the flushing liquid - when the filter is clean, the liquid flows happily for all 10 seconds of pump operation. When the filter is clogged, a certain amount of slurry slowly seeps out of the tank through the filter into it, and when the pump is running, this slurry is first flushed into the hole, and then, when it is exhausted, the flushing stops, and the engine hums idle.

In this case, you need to clean or change the filter. To clean the filter, there is an interesting device inside it - three rotating nozzles. When filling or flushing the toilet, a special liquid is supplied under pressure and sprayed onto the inner surface of the filter. Under the influence of the flowing jets, the nozzles rotate on an axis, irrigating the entire surface of the filter from the inside and washing away contaminants from the mesh holes. But still, the filter gradually becomes clogged.

And finally, this is what a flush switch with a time relay looks like:

(there is a small box at the back with a circuit board inside and a microswitch). The relay supplies the electric motor with a three-phase voltage of 115V for 10 s and provides a pause between restarts. The handle that you press to flush sits on this tetrahedral roller.

The drain and fill fittings are electrically heated. To prevent any remaining liquid from freezing, the casing is very cold at altitude.

The toilet on an airplane is one of the important elements of the airliner. After all, flights take more than one hour, the number of people on board is large, and, naturally, they need to meet their needs a lot and often. Many people are accustomed to the fact that the toilet on board a ship is similar to a familiar one at home. It just works a little differently - it makes noise, sucks up water quickly, etc. Experts explain how the toilet works on an airplane.

When aircraft manufacturing was just beginning to develop, ordinary buckets served as the first toilets. And this was easily explained by the fact that the airliners were as simple as possible, dry toilets had not been invented then, and the sewage system on the plane had not yet been developed. So we had to contrive in order to give passengers the opportunity to fulfill their natural needs, and make sure that everything did not spill out, and even figure out how to get rid of the smell.

It is not known for certain when exactly aircraft flushing systems appeared. But they were a real breakthrough.

Where is the toilet on the plane?

The number of toilets on board the aircraft and their location directly depend on the type of aircraft. So, for example, they can be distributed as follows:

Tu-154, Airbus A-320, Boeing 737 have 3 toilets: one of them is located near the entrance to the plane, two in the tail
The Boeing 767 has 5 toilets: 1 in business class (mostly at the beginning), 2 between business and economy classes, 2 in the middle of economy
The Boeing 747 has 11 toilets: a pair of them are located at the beginning and end of the aircraft, 4 in the middle, and 3 on the second deck.

Airplane water distribution

Before you figure out how the toilet on an airliner works and where everything goes on board, you need to understand that the plane is not connected to a central sewer system. And a very important aspect is the process of water entering the liner.

The water that is poured into special tanks on board the aircraft undergoes very strict selection and control. It must have a control card and a certificate of conformity. The water supplied to the liner is so pure that you can literally drink it straight from the hose. Water is poured in as the plane prepares for departure. For example, about 200 liters of liquid need to be poured into special A-320 tanks. For the most part, water is poured to the brim, i.e. until it flows out of the hole back out of the tank. Next, this liquid is distributed in accordance with the standards and technical features of the aircraft to the sinks, washbasins and to the boiler. Some of it goes into the toilets.

The principle of operation of a toilet on an airplane

Many people are interested in how the toilet works on the liner. After all, it makes noise, water and all the contents are quickly absorbed, and practically no drops of liquid remain on the surface. All contents on some planes go into a special tank. Human waste goes into it under the influence of vacuum and pressure - this is why the noise is heard when the flush pedal is pressed. Then everything is stored in tanks until the end of the trip, securely and hermetically sealed so that there is no irritating smell on the plane. The flush manifold is located under the toilet rim.

In a number of airliners, tanks have filters that do not allow large particles to pass through. Special chemicals are added to the water to help dissolve organic matter and prevent odor.

There are airplanes that use biotoilets. Today, most modern airliners are equipped with just such. On Airbus A320 tanks are designed for 170 liters, on Tu-154 they can use 2 tanks - 115 and 280 liters.

Some aircraft may use other closed-loop systems. The liquid in these can be filtered and reused. Naturally, it also undergoes the necessary disinfection so that no diseases spread.

How to clean an airplane

When the airliner arrives at its destination, a special sewer truck drives up to it. It has a special corrugated hose that is connected to a special hole in the side of the aircraft. Through this pipe, all the contents of the tanks enter the car. If suddenly the tanks become clogged with something, they are additionally washed. Special disinfectant solutions are used to wash tanks. Afterwards, liquid is pumped into the tanks again, and the toilet on the plane is again ready for use.

To prevent the toilet from getting clogged

It is very important to understand that the entire sewage system in the toilet is very clearly thought out and designed for certain organic waste. If larger and larger objects, and even those that cannot be decomposed, get into the toilet, the system becomes dirty and fails.

Often the cause of the problem is human factor. If passengers throw diapers, a lot of paper, tampons, etc. into the toilet, they can swell and clog the entire space. Technicians will have a number of problems because... The system is closed and you won’t be able to get anything out of it easily; you’ll have to disassemble almost half of it. This means that failure to comply with requests to throw garbage into specially designated bins carries the risk of putting the toilet out of service for a long time. If the flight is long and non-stop, this can be a real disaster.

Can something fall out of an airplane?

Cases where small pieces of ice with feces flew from the sky were indeed recorded. But they are rare, and do not work in situations with large modern airliners. The maximum that can be dropped from an airplane is water from washbasins. But she is not scary on earth, because... manages to turn into fine ice, melt, etc. Everything collected from the toilet is removed from the aircraft exclusively on the ground and exclusively by special workers.

What you see below is not a compartment of a spaceship or a picture of everyday life from the future. This is a new corporate jet that was brought to the Bahrain Air Show Airbus airline. Aircraft designed for comfortable travel wealthy clients, has, in addition to a double bed and a meeting room, also a toilet with a shower, with controlled light and sound. But what if people sometimes have to travel for quite a long time? There is a toilet, although not of the same standard as that of Airbus, on any or almost any board of the aircraft.

A little history

Probably everyone has asked themselves these questions at least once in their life: how does the toilet work on an airplane? After all, an airplane is not an old-style train, where our waste products fell from the train directly onto the rails.

Is it possible to use the toilet on an airplane immediately after landing, “in the sanitary zone of the city,” as the train conductor would tell us? It is possible, although it is not recommended for safety reasons at the moment of takeoff. In general, on airplanes, as well as on modern trains, today most often a vacuum system for collecting sewage waste is constantly in operation.

Fact! The story of a certain German fisherman is well known, what happened to him in the summer of 1998 near Straubing-Wallmühle, an airport northeast of Munich. So he was doused with feces from a passing Airbus 320, which the victim reported to the police. Two years later, in Spain, a gift from a plane flying in the sky in the form of a 4-kilogram ice ball made of human excrement fell on the hood of a car near Seville. The poor Spaniard, the owner of the car, was just thinking about getting into the car and miraculously escaped injury. There are still many such cases that, in principle, should not have happened, because the hatches on the plane are not opened.

In fact, this was still possible, albeit twenty years before the events described. The fact is that when there were simply no hatches on board, ordinary buckets were installed instead of toilets, and the planes were not airtight in flight. Then, over time, the first washing systems appeared. Old models aircraft had a special container for collecting drains. However, in some aircraft developed before the first half of the 60s, an open exhaust system was also used: the toilet drain pipe with a valve at the end was simply led overboard - this is how the toilet system works in passenger carriage old type. For example, the Il-14 aircraft was equipped in this way. If the plane was high-altitude, then depressurization was prevented by a two-valve airlock; it was placed on the vent pipe. This is how the sewer systems worked on the first Il-18 and Tu-104.

Today, other, more modern, waste collection and disposal systems are used on board.

How does it work

Designers of modern aircraft are concerned not only about their aerodynamics, maneuverability, safety, but also about comfort for passengers. This includes thinking about new wastewater storage systems. After all, this system is not only a matter of comfort and convenience. Modernizing the sewer juice collection system saves water, or rather, protects the plane from overload, because everyone knows how much every extra kilogram means in flight.

Therefore, today various recycling systems are used on aircraft, with different principles of operation:

flush toilets - waste products dissolved in water enter a storage tank;
vacuum flushing system - from the toilet, under the influence of air pressure and vacuum, waste enters the tank, the toilet is flushed with a small volume of water. It is due to the suction that a specific loud sound occurs in the toilet cabin, which passengers sometimes mistake for a second depressurization of the aircraft. However, in all other respects the system is good and comfortable;

closed systems - this type of sewer system recirculates liquid initially taken from a water tank, and then filtered and purified using deodorization and disinfection chemicals. Purified water is reused to flush the toilet.

Despite all the different designs, the sewage system of the liners includes tanks; wastewater from the sink and toilet goes into them to mix with chemicals - this is how the wastewater gets rid of odor and is disinfected. After the plane arrives, the liquid or filtered waste is pumped out by a tank-machine on wheels (one of the models, for example, is called “MA-7”) to be removed and disposed of.

By the way, depending on the aircraft, the tanks may vary in volume. Thus, the A-320 aircraft is equipped with only one 170-liter tank. But in the Tu-154 airliner there is a front toilet with a tank of 115 liters and a second one of 280.

Where are they and how many are there?

I am looking for the restroom. The number of toilet seats and the location of the cabins depends on the type of aircraft and the flight range it operates. Thus, aircraft such as air taxis that fly short distances may not have a toilet at all. While in huge airbuses long distance There are several cabins. The toilet is usually located on the plane at the beginning of the cabin, at the entrance, and at the end. Thus, the Boeing 737, A-320 and Tu-154 are equipped with three cabins (a pair in the tail, one at the beginning), the Boeing 767 has one toilet in business class, and four more between business and economy classes and in the most economy class. The Boeing 747 has 11 toilet seats, including two on the second deck.

Did you know? Do you know why there are ashtrays in the toilets on board, if smoking on the plane is generally prohibited? Many people ask themselves this question, and the answer lies in the following. Firstly, the new ban rules were introduced not so long ago, and before that, smoking on an airplane, as in many other public places, was acceptable and even fashionable. However, many current aircraft have been in service since those times. But even on new planes, there are still ashtrays: just in case someone decides to smoke in violation of the ban, at least they can put out the cigarette butt safely, without starting a fire on board.

How to find

Finding a toilet on an airplane is quite simple - there are special signs and tables in the cabin, there is a layout diagram seats, which provides directions and locations of restrooms. Finally, you can always contact the flight attendant.

Paid or free

Some may find the question strange, because the toilet on board is an everyday matter, and therefore its use is free. Although the idea of introducing a fee for the toilet periodically arises among individual carriers. It is not supported yet, but some companies are thinking very unconventionally about in-flight fuel economy and are turning to the toilet topic.

So, the airline from Japan All Nippon Airways (ANA) is asking its passengers to visit the restroom on the ground before boarding their flight. For now, this is only being done on select flights from Tokyo to Singapore. This is done to save fuel, as well as for environmental reasons: the Japanese believe that such a small amount of at least half of all flights can reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by about 4.2 tons monthly, and therefore prevent global warming.

There are different toilets

Air toilet stalls are mostly cramped. As a rule, a washbasin, toilet, and accessories are compactly placed there. hygiene supplies. The standard size is 90x90 cm, which is generally not very wide. However, even such sizes will apparently soon become a luxury. The fact is that the developers, primarily representatives of the B/A Aerospace studio, are already busy looking for options for new cabins with a reduced number of toilets and a reduction in the area of the remaining cabins. It's all about saving - you need to squeeze in another row of seats. They will be installed first on the Bingi 737-900, and the American airline Delta will receive them.

However, cramped space does not bother those traveling in luxury cabins. For example, passengers of any of the 200 Airbus A380 aircraft already delivered different companies peace. So, in the toilet of this Airbus, colors, lighting, convenience, comfort are ideally combined, and there are also various pleasant little things.

Only a seat on a special plane can be higher and steeper than this. IL-96, according to data published on the Internet, is being finalized in Voronezh; it will be the new “aircraft number one” of our country. The “Flying Kremlin” will also have a toilet with appropriate finishing.

This is interesting! As for military aircraft, those that were produced in the USSR before the 80s did not have this cabin at all. The pilots even covered long distances with a single, hermetically sealed sanitary tank; for some reason nothing at all was provided for other needs. Sometimes there were changes in the design of the aircraft in the form of an underground tank with pipes removed for all four crew members. This can be seen on the Tu-22M.

The Tu-142 has an on-board toilet system, but it is so imperfect and old that it is difficult to use. If a military transport aircraft (An-2, for example) performs the task of transporting passengers, then plastic buckets are simply installed somewhere in a nook. Sometimes dry toilets are carried on board. Modern military aircraft are already produced with equipped toilets: the Il-76, for example, has a toilet stall from passenger plane, and on board the Tu-160 aircraft the pressurized cabin is equipped with a special module.

It is worth saying that the toilet can be a place of increased danger even on earth, not to mention the sky. Therefore, wherever you are, in the cabin of a super-airbus or in a small cabin of an old-style airplane, know that you need to use this miracle of technology carefully and carefully. Namely:

just not during takeoff and landing - at this time you need to sit still with your seat belt fastened;
you must not smoke so as not to trigger a smoke alarm;
Do not throw anything unnecessary into the toilet - there are containers for this;
Close the toilet lid before pressing the flush button.

Interesting fact. The latter is difficult to explain. Really scary tale about how one heavy-set citizen was forced to sit on the toilet for the entire flight, is this true? They say it was sucked in by a perfectly working vacuum cleaning system. Perhaps these are just rumors.

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